Perchance
by Mingsmommy
Summary: Grissom contemplates life without Sara. Through Bull. Originally posted as part of the Last Fanfic Author Standing Challenge.


**Dislaimer: **None of the characters contained herein belong to me. But I do own 4 out of the 6 seasons on DVD. And that's about all I own. Please don't sue me.

A/N: Originally posted for the Last Fanfic Author Standing Challenge. This is officially unbetaed, but I did apply the concrit provided by the participants in the challenge.

* * *

Since Sara left, I've been having this dream...the details aren't always identical, but the basic premise is always the same. 

I'm on my way home, only it's not the home I have now. It's a home I know is mine; I must have lived there for a very long time because the road is as familiar to me as my own skin. I'm in the car I had in grad school, a 1971 Ford Fairlane, white with a dark blue interior. The route is hilly and winding. I am driving more or less by rote, when I suddenly realized my eyes are closed and I can't open them no matter how hard I try. Now, here's the thing, before I realize my eyes are closed, I was driving just fine. But when I realize I'm blind, I begin panicking and driving erratically and just keep waiting to crash. By this time I realize the hills are actually cliffs and if I drive off the road, I will drive off a precipice. Even though I can't see, I know there is traffic coming from the other direction. And I can't seem to stop the car. Sometimes I wake up just as the panic is reaching a fever pitch. Other times I jolt awake just as I feel the tires of the car leave solid ground and I know I am about to go tumbling end over end off the side of a mountain.

Occasionally when I come to I am sitting up, gasping for air before it registers that I am in my bedroom, safe from blindness and cars and cliffs. Today, though, there is no gasping; I just open my eyes. I'm in my bed with the dog snoring beside me. That irks me; I didn't want him to be allowed on the furniture but he and Sara looked at me with big, brown, pleading eyes and I relented. Hank has refused to be retrained into the "no dogs on the furniture" rule since Sara left.

I note it took all of three seconds between opening my eyes and a thought of Sara. It's been three months. So, in another 300 years I can reasonably expect to go an hour before thinking of her. Progress.

I hear the thump and subsequent hum of the furnace kicking on and I roll onto my back, pulling the covers up over my shoulders. It's seems like this had been a cold winter. But then I realize I'm feeling it more this year because I don't have her here to keep me warm. For someone so lithe, she puts off an enormous amount of body heat. I was able to set the heat so low last year, I don't think the heat came on at all when we slept. Well, I don't know how often it came on the month I spent in Massachusetts.

In the last three months I've spent a lot of time thinking about _that_ month. And the "ifs" begin gnawing at me...if I hadn't gone, maybe I would have caught Natalie sooner and Sara wouldn't have been taken and all of the memories triggered. If I hadn't left her for a month, maybe she would have smiled more, been happier, had more trust in me. If I had stayed here, maybe even if Sara had been taken, maybe she wouldn't have felt it was all right to leave, she wouldn't know then that I could live without her. But I went. And we didn't catch Natalie until it was too late and Sara was taken. Sara came back, dragging all of the ghosts of the past with her. Then she left.

Hank growls in his sleep, snuffles, then settles back down, a caramel and white lump of fur in the middle of our bed. My bed.

There is a part of me that occasionally tries to whip the rest of me into a righteous fury over her leaving with just a note. _A note!_ the voice in my head snarls. I ignore it. The voice growls about how _it was a mistake to begin with_ and how Sara _waited until I gave her everything, then just left_. Primly the voice adds, _of course, she had to embarass me and break professional propriety by kissing me in the middle of the hall at work first_. I really hate that voice. I hate even more the thought that that part of me is right. But I never really get angry. I don't have the energy for it. Besides, that's not going to bring Sara back.

I stare at the blank whiteness of the ceiling. The truth is I know she's not coming back. Probably. She's probably not coming back. I feel my stomach roll and my throat burn even as I think it. It makes me sick to even think it. But I have to get used to the idea. Probably.

I roll to my side, my back facing what used to be her place. Tomorrow I'm going to sleep in the middle of the bed. Tomorrow.

I slide back in to sleep, back to the winding road, the home I am trying to get to, the blindness I must overcome and the car that won't stop. Only this time as the car falls headlong over the edge, before the panic overtakes me, I think, _Be in this moment. Let's just see where this goes._


End file.
